Linear fluctuating interface (${\partial }_{t}h=\alpha {\nabla }^{2}h+\eta$)

A linear fluctuating interface smooths height gradients by diffusion and receives additive Gaussian white noise. With periodic or Neumann boundary conditions, its nonzero Fourier modes are independent Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes if the noise is diagonal in that basis. The unconstrained uniform height is a Brownian zero mode of a fluctuating interface.

For a nonzero Fourier mode satisfying $d{h}_q=-\alpha q^2{h}_{q}dt+\sigma d{W}_q$ with $\alpha >0$, the explicit Ornstein-Uhlenbeck solution and Itô isometry give the stationary second moment ${\sigma }^2/(2\alpha q^2)$. The prefactor depends on the normalization of the mode noise, while the inverse-square dependence follows from diffusive relaxation.

An unpinned uniform height driven by Gaussian white noise is Brownian motion. Its variance grows as ${\sigma }^{2}t$ and it has no stationary distribution on the real height axis for $\sigma >0$. Indeed, a stationary characteristic function would obey $\hat{\mu }(k)=\hat{\mu }(k)e^{-{\sigma }^2{k}^{2}t/2}$, incompatible with continuity at zero. Quotienting out the uniform height can still leave stationary shape fluctuations.